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Durkheim's book must not be a big seller. This would explain why a new, better translation hasn't appeared. This present translation is, to put it bluntly, horrible. This is really a shame, as Durkheim's thesis is quite compelling (if not flawed).On average, each page of text is missing about two dozen commas.One example:"Without the necessary act of satisfaction[,] what is called the moral consciousness could not be preserved."Then there are the pedantic (and barely readable) constructions such as the following.Halls's version:"By this is explained why some acts have so frequently been held to be criminal..."Revised:"This explains why some acts have so frequently been held to be criminal..."?Halls's version:"Undoubtedly most of these are not harmful, for if they were, in such conditions the individual could not live."Revised:"Undoubtedly, most of these are not harmful; if they were, the individual could not live."Finally, there are sentences that are so obfuscatory, I don't know how to fix them:"In both cases the force shocked by the crime and that rejects it is thus the same." (I'm not kidding, this is one of Halls's actual sentences.)

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If the last reviewer had spent more time looking for meaning in Durkheims text instead of playing the tedious game of 'chase the punction' s/he may have managed to make sense of the prose... I had not trouble reading it - even the line that reads badly out of context is simple enough to grasp in text.Classic text but it is not a translation that will work well for sticklers.